You never know quite what you're going to get when you pick up a book by a poet you've never read before. Fortunately, Julie Hanson's Unbeknownst was a charming find. Her free verse poetry is a humorous look at the seemingly mundane, elevating the everyday experience and making it sing. A really lovely book of poetry. ( )

Iowa Poetry Prize winner

Is this poetry? It feels more like a conversation with an intelligent and honest friend. The thoughts are not high-brow but simple observations of everyday life. It's the first of Hanson's poetry that I've read, and I'm sold on her style. It's poetry that doesn't require you to work too hard to understand, but at the same time, it's not simplistic or naive.

Many of the poems feature questions-a deliberate effort to make the reader respond and think. Her questions put into words ideas that we may only toy with, or wonder about. Hanson puts them out there in print, legitimizing their importance. One of the most fascinating is "Prayer", in which she analzyes both the input and output of the attempt at spiritual connection. It's free verse, rambling a bit, yet the direction she leads you to is profound:

"...A friend of my mother's used to pray for parking spaces.

A person could tell a lot about us

by the way we pray.

When someone prays, Help me with this problem,

it might mean Solve it.

Or, show me the way.

A person could tell a lot about God

by the way we pray.

Can our gestures be seen?

Are the hands quieted or are they utilized?

Is there reason to raise the face heavenward?

Is the context provided, or is this

presumed known?

Does the Presence stay with us for the long

weeping part, or are we thought

to be put on hold?

Sometimes we resign ourselves

to another mortal isntead--a stranger

seated next to us, a cat, a dog, a friend-

and what is said has a quality

common in fiction, less so in life.

Short, abrupt sentences trip up,

entangled in the longer ones

that are being thought...."

Another poem uses simple birds to illustrate our own perception of ourselves, and how we may be caught up in the irrelevant. From "Larger":

"The female cardinal isn't the least bit

disappointed that the shade of red she is is brown.

She looks at him and thinks, Aren't we gorgeous?

Disappointment is a theme too available to me.

Judgment, another.

Would that I were rid of them."

In "Always a Little Something Somewhere in the Purse", Hanson explores the acting and roles that must be played by women on occasion, in order to survive. She shows that it's the small things "which can't alter reality in the large sense/but might help us along in the small." The hopeful nature that tries to work past the reality of ourselves is both a gift and a flaw-why can't we just be ourselves?

I marked too many passages in the book to comment on, but she explores adoption, marriage, loyalty, and disappointment with depth and humor. Somehow she reminded me a bit of Emily Dickinson's line "hope is the thing with feathers", although their styles are entirely different. ( )

Simple and powerful, this is what poetry is meant to be. Although, I did not always find a connection with the poem there were powerful elements in most. I did not try to fit them to my life as we so often make the mistake of doing. This is Julie's life but interesting enough to go back to several times. ( )

I do not use the term "tour de force" lightly--imagine us, the readers, made to embark upon what sublimely resembles nothing less than a vibrant tidal wave. Julia Hanson's words and the silences between them together create a category of poetry all their own. Part elegy, part love song, part suburban ode, part natural bewilderment--the poems that dwell in "Unbeknownst" urge us to look beyond those things we normally consider to be status quo--those things we have accepted as the "this is it"s of our lives--and see the beauty within and beyond them. Hanson writes, "And not a dear thing / has been wasted" meaning: not a dear utterance, not a moment of this life that we are living.

Hanson's work of poetry is truly breathtaking. Although her subjects might seem mundane("Cold Cereal and Milk at 3 AM,")her poems are instilled with quiet passion and detailed insight. Poems like "Grab the Far End" make it extremely easy to see why Hanson has become such a distinguished poet. Her accolades are well earned with this collection. ( )